Rene-NASA-Mooned-America

The Numbers Game / Chap. 9 p. 78
Mr. Gray also seems confused about the numbering system, but then to straighten it out
he claims, "For reasons that would make sense only to a librarian, this flight was designated
Apollo 7. (Apollo 1 had been set aside at the request of the widows for the flight that never
took place, Apollo 2 and 3 never existed, and Apollo 4, 5, and 6 were unmanned flight
tests.)" 9
However, earlier in his book he tells us that in the spring and fall of 1966 two unmanned
Apollo flights were indeed made. 10 On the other hand, didn't Frank Borman tell us there
were three Apollo flights that year See what I mean Everybody seems to have been baffled
by bullshit!
Collins reported that the first Saturn V flight was on November 9, 1967 and it was, "A
nearly perfect flight, it was not only the maiden voyage of the Saturn V but..." " That test
flight took place close to 9 months after the fire. It also seems to show that NASA's zero test
policy was a macabre joke. And it proved that Apollo 1 was actually Apollo 1.
As noted before, the 1B was too small to go to the Moon. Only the Saturn V could make
that weighty haul, but at the time of the fire the Saturn V was still in development. For all I
know it may still be in development. Bill Kaysing is positive the Saturn V never flew.
Collins had this to say about the 1B rocket after the fire, "But we still had a hell of a long
way to go; we weren't going to get Wally and crew airborne until summer 1968 at the
earliest, and they were going on a puny Saturn IB rocket." 12 Note his accurate — for once —
adjective, "puny"!
No matter how you look at it three astronauts died in a fire in an obsolete capsule on top
of a rocket far too small to do the job. Why were they in there The Apollo 7 boosted
October 11, 1968 still using the 1B engine. Flight 503 flew on December 21, 1968 and
Collins wrote of this flight, "502 had more than its share of problems, and had barely limped
into earth orbit. The first stage had developed severe oscillations, two out of five secondstage
engines had shut down, and the guidance system had overcompensated and put the
vehicle into an orbit whose apogee was a hundred miles too high." 13
Introducing even more confusion about the numbering Mr. Hurt writes the following
paragraph.
"The first series of unmanned Apollo missions, three far less ambitious earth orbital
flights, were nearly catastrophic embarrassments. Apollo 4 suffered a fuel spill and a
major computer malfunction. Apollo 5, the inaugural test flight of the lunar module,
experienced two equally serious problems. When the hastily refurbished spacecraft
finally got off the ground, the LEM's engine, which was supposed to fire for thirty-eight
seconds at full power, only managed to burn for four seconds at ten percent thrust.
Apollo six failed even more miserably. Due to a sequence of booster engine
malfunctions, the spacecraft was catapulted into the wrong orbit before it got a chance to
show its stuff." 14
On Apollo 6 in "Journey To Tranquility' we find, "A film taken from a high-flying
aircraft equipped with a radar-directed camera actually showed a piece of the rocket
breaking away." 15
NASA MOONED AMERICA! / Rene